Arizona Becomes 15th State to Approve Medical Marijuana

In the recent election, the people of Arizona voted for Proposition 203, which only ended up winning by a slim margin of around 4000 votes despite losing by almost 7000 votes at one point on Election Day. The campaign manager for the Arizona Medical Marijuana Policy Project says that this winning outcome now allows the state to set an example to the rest of the country "on what a good medical marijuana program looks like."Arizona's specific measure will be providing marijuana to any patient with cancer, AIDS, hepatitis C, or "any other chronic or debilitating disease" that meets the guidelines to grow plants or buy two and a half ounces every two weeks. All of Arizona's sheriffs and county prosecutors, the governor, the state attorney general, and many other politicians opposed this measure because they believe that it will increase crime around the areas that marijuana is dispensed and that more people will now drive while impaired. I thought that this article is relevant because medical marijuana has been on the rise since the first state, California, approved it in 1996. Though the measure of legalization of marijuana in California lost in the 2010 election, I feel that this is an issue to watch in the future, as the Marijuana Policy Project is trying to achieve its ultimate goal of national legalization.